One of my clients this week came into my practice and brought up an interesting issue. We have been working during the last few sessions on her self-confidence and self-esteem and as a result of that, she was pleased to notice that she manages to be much more herself in public. She is more assertive, lets others know of her opinions and takes the risk to disagree with her close ones.
However, she’s struggling in her marriage. One of the patterns I’ve often observed in people suffering from low self-esteem and codependency is what is called being a people-pleaser. That means that they tend to do what they believe others expect them to do, to gain their approval and their love, rather than focusing on what is best for themselves.
What is often seen in the early days of relationships is the emergence of a dynamic: that’s the way people relate to each other, or in TA terms, “the game they play”. The longest the relationship lasts, the strongest those patterns get engrained, and it becomes then very difficult to change them.
When someone sorts out their low self esteem and codependency issues, or as a matter of fact embarks on any self-discovery journey, their relationships may get affected. That’s exactly what happened to my client. She has been married for over 30 years, and always adopted behaviours to please her husband. For example, she would always laugh at his lousy jokes, to make sure he wouldn’t get upset. Even though, in her own words, they were rarely funny and sometimes quite offensive.
But a few days ago, something strange happened. Now that she feels more confident in herself, she’s taking the risk to fully express who she is, and stops pretending to feel or believe what is more comfortable for those around her. So when her husband came up with another of his dodgy comment, she simply didn’t laugh. He got upset, and that created tension between them. My client was concerned, as tension has been building quite a lot in the past few weeks.
Relationships naturally evolve, but if one of the protagonists does some deep meaningful changes whilst the other doesn’t, it will likely have a ripple effect. Because their partner might feel unsettled with the new dynamic of the relationship, or threatened by those sudden changes. Communication is the most effective way to smoothen this transition phase, and even though some people grow apart as a result of it, most relationships get stronger and more meaningful.
In my next post I’ll share some NLP communication tools that can be useful to overcome those challenges. In the meantime, I’m interested to know if you’ve had this experience in your personal life, so please drop me a line to let me know your thoughts!